What is OER?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• Define Open Educational Resources (OER)

• Describe the 5R permissions

• Identify examples of OER types

On the Strategic Initiatives: Open Educational Resources page of their website, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education includes the following definition:

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions."

Examples of OER

Types of OER include (but are not limited to) syllabi, lesson plans, learning modules, lab experiments, simulations, course videos, discussion prompts, assignments, assessments, library guides, and course design templates.

Listed below are a few examples of the ways in which faculty, students, librarians, and instructional designers may use or support the adoption of open educational resources:

Faculty

Many faculty already use OER in their classes — for example, showing an openly licensed course video or using worksheets created and shared by other faculty. Faculty can create and share syllabi, lesson plans, and even entire textbooks for their courses. They can collaborate with faculty at their own institutions, or other institutions around the world. They can access and remix existing OER and re-publish them to share with others.

Students

Students can play a significant role in creating and improving OER ─ from simple assignments to full textbooks. One example from Plymouth State University includes students working together to find public-domain materials, write topic introductions, craft discussion forum prompts, and create assignments to go along with the materials to create a full OER textbook. The result became The Open Anthology of Early American Literature.

Librarians

Librarians play a key role in OER initiatives by advocating, developing, exploring, and managing OER. Along with helping you find relevant OER, librarians can help you better understand copyright and licensing concepts, and guide you through your Creative Commons licensing options if you choose to create materials yourself. You will explore this further in Module 5, Finding OER.

Instructional Designers

Instructional Designers can work with faculty and students to integrate OER into teaching and learning and also share and publish their course design templates as OER. Many instructional designers and technologists work with librarians and IT services to help integrate OER into learning management systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Brightspace.

The 5Rs

When considering OER, as educators, we must go beyond the surface level aspect of access. We must also recognize the range of permisssions associated with the OER that we may utilize or create. When OER are created and/or synthesized, the educator aligns the resource with a Public Doman designation or Creative Commons license. With these, are associated permissions. A great way to understand such permisions are through a breakdown as commonly represented via the 5Rs.

1. Retain - make, own, and control a copy of the resource (e.g., download and keep your own copy)

2. Revise - edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource (e.g., translate into another language)

3. Remix - combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new (e.g., make a mashup)

4. Reuse - use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly (e.g., on a website, in a presentation, in a class)

5. Redistribute - share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (e.g., post a copy online or give one to a friend)

Concept Review

Which of the following describes an OER?

____Free of cost and having an open license

____Sourced from a reputable publisher

____Available in high-resolution formats

____Free to view online

____ open + permissions

Can you name the 5R permissions associated with Open Educational Resources

Attributions

The 5Rs comes from Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.

Examples of OER are from Texas Learn OER by Carrie Gits for DigiTex which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CC BY 2020.